Home / Data sources / Camera traps
Source 01 — Entry
Camera traps
Camera traps are cameras that fire on motion or heat, or on a timer, and record images or video of animals that pass. They work day and night without anyone present, which makes them a standard tool for detecting shy or nocturnal species.
Specimen card
At a glance
A weatherproof camera with a passive-infrared or time trigger, deployed at one location for a period of time (a deployment).
Image and video files, plus per-file metadata: timestamp, camera, location and settings. After review, observations: which taxon, how many, and who or what made the label.
Agouti, Timelapse, TRAPPER, Wildlife Insights; AI helpers such as MegaDetector and SpeciesNet. All tools →
Camtrap DP for exchange and archiving (deployments, media, observations); occurrences map to Darwin Core for publication on GBIF.
Volume. Many triggers contain no animal, and sorting by hand does not scale. AI speeds this up, but performance varies with species, region and conditions, so keep a human review step and record who or what made each label.
Through the life cycle
From field to archive
Plan the layout and spacing of cameras around your question; note camera height, direction and settings for every deployment.
Move files off SD cards into one system with backups; keep the original files and their timestamps.
Filter empty images, identify species, and review and correct AI labels. Keep the original model label next to the reviewed one.
Export as Camtrap DP; generalise coordinates of sensitive species and blur or remove people before sharing.
Publish to GBIF through an IPT, or deposit the Camtrap DP package in a repository so later surveys have a baseline.
Other sources
GPS tracking & telemetry · Acoustic monitoring · Remote sensing · Field observations & surveys · Citizen science